Adventure 2

After their
adventures in the Caves of Chaos, the party recuperated at the Keep on the
Borderlands. The Castellan and his elven advisor, Luren Salisen, trained the party members who were eligible to advance
in Weapon Mastery. They also celebrated the King’s Festival (a Karameikan
holiday that occurs on the first day of the new year, as well as being the
title of another Basic adventure) at the Keep. Luren Salisen revealed the
contents of the mysterious black box that they had found in the previous
adventure. It turned out to be a single piece of parchment, which Luren was
reluctant to read in case it turned out to be cursed. The box mysteriously
vanished as soon as it had revealed its contents.

The party
members read the parchment, which appeared to be simply a notice that a Prince
of Glantri was seeking adventurers to undertake a mission for which they will
be well rewarded. Anyone reading the scroll was subject to a geas (if they failed their saving
throw), and the majority of the party failed their saves. Were it not for the geas, Gandi, Morgan and Klaus would
have been very reluctant to travel to Glantri, a realm where dwarves and
clerics are outlawed. Early in the new year, a comet blazed across the sky from
east to west, after which a bright red star could be seen in the west (which
happened to be the direction in which Glantri lay).

The party
went to the stables to purchase some steeds so that they could carry all of
their hard earned treasure with them. Leaving it the Keep wasn’t such a good
idea as they were unsure whether or when they were likely to return this way.
All that was available at the stables were two riding horses and a mule (poor
thing). This, though, was enough to allow the party to travel at a reasonably
fast movement rate. Without the aid of the horses and carrying all of their
treasure and equipment themselves, the party would barely be able to crawl.

On the eighth
day of the new year, the party were ready to set off for Glantri. Their first
stop was at Penhaligon, where they had begun the campaign, and here they could
buy more horses (war horses this time). They then travelled a short way down
the road to Kelvin, one of the largest towns in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos,
which was run by Baron Desmond Kelvin, a high level cleric. The Baron had
received word of the party’s good deeds from the Castellan, and removed the Helm of Alignment Change from Sneaky using a remove curse spell. He also made sure
that the party paid their adventurer’s tax on time (a substantial amount –
9,000 gold pieces!)

Desmond
Kelvin provided the party with a detailed map of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos
and the outlying lands, as well as a less detailed map showing the roads out of
Karameikos, through the Republic of Darokin, and to the Principalities of
Glantri. The most straightforward (though not most direct) route was to head
north to Selenica, from there take the road west to the capital city of
Darokin, and then north to Corunglain, before heading for the Principalities of
Glantri on the other side of the Broken Lands.

When the
party arrived at Selenica, a trading town at the eastern end of the Republic of
Darokin, Klaus was able to purchase a more detailed map of the Republic of
Darokin for 5 gold pieces (an extortionate price, but the map vendor saw that
Klaus had ‘adventurer’ written all over him). An alternative, more direct,
route to Corunglain was found to lead north-westwards and between the northern
edge of the vast forest of Alfheim on one side and the mountains of Rockhome on
the other. The routes around Alfheim, and the north-western route in
particular, are referred to by locals as ‘the necklace’. Before being thrown
out of a bar for trying to start a brawl, Gandi discovered that the shorter
route was extremely perilous, and anyone travelling the hilly regions on this
route were likely to be attacked by angry elves from Alfheim. Lithanor had
heard rumours that this route was dangerous due to the likelihood of being
attacked by angry dwarves from Rockhome.

The party
decided to stick to the originally planned caravan route to Darokin City. A few
small towns (not shown on Baron Kelvin's map) provided brief stop off points,
and the party even visited a circus that was performing at one of the towns.
The clowns and some of the performers turned out to be the kobolds, goblins and
other humanoids that the party had rescued from the slave pens of the bugbears
in the Caves of Chaos. The rebel bugbear had led them safely out of Karameikos,
and, rather than return to the land of Thar, decided that it would be safer and
more lucrative for them to join the circus. They informed the party that prior
to discovering the circus, they had avoided returning to Thar (a.k.a. the
Broken Lands) because, among other reasons, the route would have taken them
through treacherous hills where they were likely to be attacked by angry elves
and dwarves.

The party
reached Darokin, but decided to keep their visit short and maintain a low
profile so as not to attract attention from the thieves’ guild, given that they
were carrying a large amount of treasure. They then set off north and reached
Corunglain, a large fortified city on the edge of the Broken Lands. Here, the
party had to make the decision as to whether they would take the treacherous
caravan trail through the Broken Lands, or take the trail westwards to bypass
Thar and enter the Principalities of Glantri by this more indirect route. They
eventually decided to bypass the Broken Lands. The route had a few forts
stationed along the way where they could rest and get their bearings. However,
en route to the third fort, the party realised late in the third day of travel
that they had stumbled onto a false trail and ventured off course.

Unbeknownst
to the party, they were now inside the borders of the Principalities of
Glantri. It was here that they decided to make camp. Their sleep was plagued
with nightmares. In the morning, they awoke to find that the area they were in was not hilly (as far as they could tell), which it was the previous night. Before
them was a large mansion, the style of which was totally unfamiliar, and in every
other direction, surrounding themselves and the mansion, was a strange gray
mist. Lithanor was about to venture into the mist to see if he could find a way
through when they noticed that their mule was missing (poor thing). They found
the rope that they had used to tether the mule, trailing off into the mist.
They pulled on this and dragged the body of the poor dead mule out of the mist,
its face contorted in agony. Lithanor decided not to venture into the mist
after all.

Noticing that
the mist was slowly closing in about them, the party headed up a short flight
of steps leading to the foyer of the mansion. The double doors leading into the
foyer opened as they approached. Once inside, the horses went off to a corner
of the foyer where some hay had suddenly appeared. Lithanor thought of using
his rope of climbing to ascend to
the ceiling and hack a hole in the strange marble-like substance that the
mansion seemed to be made of, but found that it was resistant to damage when he
hacked at it with his sword and didn’t even make a mark. The good news was that
the party was no longer under the geas
that had befallen them when they read the notice back at the Keep seven weeks
ago. They had no choice but to explore this strange mansion and try to find
some other way out, if this was at all possible…

Session Two

Eventually,
the party came to the conclusion that there was no going through the mist.
Also, they concluded that they were safe from the mist inside the mansion.
Mazaramus cast an invisibility spell
on Sneaky, who was going to scout around. Mazaramus also gave her a coin with a
light spell cast on it, which she
would hide inside her leather armour when she didn’t want to be given away by
its illumination.

The double
doors on the opposite wall to the entrance were found to open onto a short hallway
with a red carpet leading north to another set of doors. Some way up on the
east wall was another door. Sneaky decided to investigate the closest door,
which led into a large room. In the centre of the room was a large square
platform raised about 3’ off of the floor. Attached by poles at each corner
were three ropes which ran around the perimeter of the platform. The closest
right hand pole had been painted blue, while the one diagonally opposite it was
painted red. The other two were painted white. Around the edge of the room were
a number of chairs, each with a pair of floating eyes hovering above them.

Sneaky
guessed that this strange structure was a boxing ring (a sport that is fairly
common in Thyatis). Stood in the ring was a golden man dressed in shorts. Sat
on the opposite side of the room was a rather dandily dressed man, flanked by
two more golden men. These two were armoured and carrying halberds.

As soon as
the door opened, the strangely dressed man began to speak in a strange accent,
apparently somewhat bewildered for a moment by the fact that the door had
opened by itself, then proclaiming that “zey are up to zere old treeks”. The
rest of the party, who had been waiting in the corridor outside, decided to
come forward and enter the room. The man turned out to be quite amiable. He
introduced himself as Jean-Louis d’Amberville, and offered a challenge to the
party. If any member of the party could last five rounds in the ring against
his demos magen (the golden guy in the trunks) he would reward them with gold.
If they actually win the fight, then they would get 10,000 gold pieces. Morgan
Bernardt stepped up to take the challenge (having 18 strength and a lot of hit
points). Before they started sparring, Jean-Louis said “why don’t we make zees
a leetle eenteresteeng?” He offered 4 to 1 odds on Morgan beating his magen,
and evens if the magen won. Lithanor put 750 gold pieces on Morgan winning, and
Mazaramus, on Sneaky’s behalf, put 750 gold on the magen. With this
arrangement, the party couldn’t lose money on the wager. Jean-Louis told the
party that Morgan couldn’t use armour or weapons, though they could use any
magic they liked, and could have one (game) round of healing between boxing
rounds (each boxing round lasted six game rounds).

The boxing
match got underway, with the obligatory Rocky
music playing (Gonna Fly Now and Eye of the Tiger). In the first round,
Morgan took quite a battering, but still won the round on points. He downed a potion of healing whilst Klaus cast a cure light wounds on him, but only
managed to heal a total of four hit points due to some poor rolling. Morgan was
relying on getting better healing than this, and would have to look at throwing
in the towel if he took another battering. Fortunately, he took the magen down
in the first round of the second boxing round.

Jean-Louis
congratulated the party on being good sports and gave them the 13,000 gold
pieces that they had won (10,000 for beating the magen and 3,000 from the
wager), as well as a large chest to carry it in. The party asked Jean-Louis if
he could provide any answers as to how the party ended up at the mansion and
where the mist had come from. All he could tell them was that he and his
family, the rest of whom are elsewhere about the mansion, are from the province
of Averoigne in France. The party have never heard of this place and have come
to the conclusion that they have been somehow transported to another world.

Whilst the
boxing match had been going on, Sneaky had decided to do some more exploring
(still being invisible). She found a room to the east of Jean-Louis’ boxing
room in which were a dozen cat-headed people. They seemed aware of her presence
despite being invisible (cat-sense) so she headed back to the corridor with the
red carpet and north through the doors at the end.

Sneaky found
herself in a large hallway with small mirrors covering the walls. The red
carpet ran down the centre of the hallway to some more doors at the end, over
300’ away. That was all that she could see before the light spell on her coin was magically dispelled, so she went back
to the rest of the party.

Taking their
winnings, the party followed the same route as Sneaky had earlier, and found
that their lantern was also extinguished as soon as they entered the hallway.
When they relit it, all the candles held in candelabra around the hallway
instantly lit themselves, filling the hallway with blinding light due the
magnifying effect of the mirrors. Everyone in the party, with the exception of
Morgan and Gandi, was blinded. Immediately after being blinded, a strange amber
globe, about 60’ across, appeared, encapsulating the party.

Session Three

The party were
relieved to find that the amber bubble not only protects the party, but allowed them
to gain experience points, level up and recuperate without having to use up
their resources. Everybody in the party levelled up with the exception of
Klaus. Gandi and the two men-at-arms received weapon training, with Gandi
becoming Skilled with the hand axe, and the men-at-arms becoming Skilled with
long swords (even though this is a Basic/Expert D&D campaign, I prefer to
call them long swords as opposed to ‘normal’ swords). As to how they got their
training, and who exactly trained them, is, at the moment, a mystery to the
players. When the amber bubble eventually disappeared (two weeks of game time
later, though the party has no idea how much time has passed), they discovered that Jean-Louis had moved their chest of gold into the foyer, where it would not
be disturbed, though the chest was 1,500 gold pieces lighter (which just happened to be how much it would have cost to train for Weapon Mastery for the
respective characters).

The party
deliberated at first as to whether they should split up, with Lithanor, Morgan
and Klaus wanting to go through the double doors at the end of the hallway to
venture further into the mansion, whilst Mazaramus, Sneaky and Gandi explored
the rooms in the west wing. They (wisely) decided against this course of
action. Instead, Sneaky, who was still invisible, went off to scout out a few
rooms, starting with the westernmost door on the north wall of the hallway.
This was found to lead into a 50’ long corridor with three doors on the east
wall. She opened the closest door and found that it led into a 20’ square room
with green goo on the floor and a stone chest, 3’ square, by the east wall. The
ceiling was a dull black, not the usual marble-like stone that the rest of the
mansion was composed of. Sneaky blew some darts at the black ceiling with her
blowgun. The first shot fell short and landed in the green goo, where the dart
was rapidly absorbed by the green goo (actually green slime). The next hit the
ceiling and caused what turned out to be a black pudding to divide into five
smaller parts, revealing part of the marble ceiling. She did not like the look
of this so she returned to the rest of the party for their assistance. Not only
that, she realised that she had dispelled her invisibility by attacking the
black pudding.

Meanwhile,
the party had decided to return to Jean-Louis. The party were turned away after
a brief discussion, Jean-Louis explaining that the boxing room was “closed for
business”. He did advise the party that it might be a better idea for the party
to store their excess treasure in the foyer until they were ready to leave the
west wing. Lithanor asked if Jean-Louis could look after their treasure, but
Jean-Louis said that that would not be such a good idea because “chairs have
eyes”.

The party went
to the room with the green slime and the black pudding. At first, they tried
using Lithanor’s rope of climbing by
attaching it to parts of the ceiling that were not covered by black pudding,
but the pudding slowly encroached on where the rope had attached, so they
abandoned this idea. Sneaky decided then to climb walls round to the stone
slab, given that she had 91% climb walls ability. She successfully climbed
around the room, avoiding the green slime and black pudding and tried to pull
the stone slab off of the stone chest. Unfortunately, the entire slab was covered
with gray ooze, and Sneaky was horribly burned by the acid. She managed to
struggle back to the party with burnt and blistered hands, and Klaus
administered a cure light wounds to
heal some of the acid damage.

Lithanor
remembered that gray oozes were susceptible to damage from normal weapons from
the time they encountered them in the shunned cavern in the Caves of Chaos. As
the slime, pudding and ooze were staying put and not making an effort to
advance on the party, they simply shot the gray ooze to pieces with arrows and
bolts.

Not one to
give up, Sneaky tried again to climb round to the slab, but failed her climb
walls with a roll of 94. She fell into the green slime, which quickly ate
through her leather armour (and her elven
boots) and proceeded to eat her flesh. Mazaramus doused her legs in oil and
set light to it to burn away the green slime. Sneaky now had badly burnt legs
as well as acid burns on her hands, but was lucky to be alive. The party then
set to destroying the rest of the green slime by bombarding it with flasks of
burning oil, of which Mazaramus had a plentiful supply.

Finally free
to examine the stone chest (the black pudding on the ceiling was quite content
to stay there), Lithanor and Morgan lifted the slab off. It is worth pointing
out here that it took two characters to lift it off, so even if Sneaky hadn’t
had her hands partially dissolved by acid and her legs turned to green slime,
she still wouldn’t have been able to move the slab on her own. The chest
contained a goodly amount of gold and platinum, as well as a pair of elven boots (okay, I threw this in
because I felt sorry for Sneaky losing hers), a sturdy looking staff and a
claymore decorated with a fancy burgundy tassel below the hilt.

Mazaramus
examined the staff, and immediately noticed that not only was it well balanced
for combat, but seemed to throb with power when he swung it about, although he
has yet to find out exactly what it is.

Morgan took
hold of the claymore (being skilled with a bastard sword). As soon as he did
so, he heard a strange wailing noise and could smell and feel a cold, fresh
mountain air. Although the sound was unlike anything he had heard before, he
soon found that it was actually a melodic and inspiring form of music.

The party
then proceeded on to the next door in the short corridor, which was found to
open into another 20’ square room. I had changed the purpose of this room from
a servants quarters as described in the module to a bathroom, though this had
no bearing on the encounter that was to take place therein. The room was filled
with webs, lurking in which were three giant spiders, each about the size of a
small pony. The party had a free round
of surprise, so they fired some missiles at them and lobbed in a flask of
burning oil before slamming the door shut.

A couple of
rounds later, they opened the door again. Although the webs had been completely
burned away, the spiders were still alive. The spiders won initiative and
seemed to just chitter at the party
instead of attacking. Louder chittering was heard coming from the north end of
the corridor, and an even larger spider seemed to emerge from the shadows and
advance down the hallway. At the same time, the two men-at-arms, Lithanor and
Bhakragh fell asleep. At this point, the party realised that these spiders were
spell-casters (though at first they thought that the larger spider coming down
the corridor was the spell caster).

Morgan
charged at the larger spider, whilst Klaus, Sneaky, Mazaramus and Gandi used
their round to wake up the sleeping characters. Morgan ran his new
bagpipe-playing claymore into the large spider, which instantly vanished as
soon as he hit it.

The next
round the spiders again won initiative. Two of the spiders cast spells while
the third, with no useful spells left, attacked Gandi. One cast continual light at Bhakragh, attempting
to blind him, but the orc made his saving throw and the spell landed behind him.
The third spider cast charm person
at Lithanor who promptly failed his saving throw. The spider attacking Gandi
missed and was promptly chopped to pieces by Gandi’s double axe attack. In the
following round, Morgan, who had returned from the hallway after bravely
vanquishing the illusory spider, charged at the spider that had charmed
Lithanor. He received a nasty cut from the elf’s sword, who had taken up
position to defend his arachnid friend. Morgan slew the spider and the charm spell was broken. Meanwhile, the
third spider was despatched by the remaining party members.

Ironically,
AD&D (and more recent edition) elves have 90% resistance to sleep and
charm, but not in Basic/Expert, and Lithanor the elf fell victim to both of
these spells in two consecutive rounds.

For their
trouble, the party found a small chest that fell out of the webs that contained
a few gems and pieces of jewelry. The spiders’ (which some readers may
recognise as aranea) spell books were actually in the form of spidery runes
woven into the web, and were destroyed when the webs were burnt away.

What horrors
await the party behind the third door of the short corridor (should they
continue this way) would have to wait until the next session.

Session Four

The party did
indeed continue exploring the short corridor that they were in. The third door
opened up into a small 10’ by 20’ room filled with linen, bath towels and
suchlike on shelves around the room (which would only make sense if there was a
bathroom nearby, which is why I altered the aranea room). After carefully
checking the towels for traps and searching for secret compartments, the party
came to the conclusion that it was just a room full of bath linen. The thought
that all these towels would have come in handy against the slimes earlier, by
setting light to them and throwing them at the green slime/black pudding even
now did not occur to the players.

The party
left the short corridor and went back to the main hallway (which by now was
just a mirrored hallway, and was no longer messing about with the party’s light
sources). They proceeded to the closest door on the north wall. Sneaky listened
at the door and heard a loud high pitched voice complaining about the wrong
colour make-up and something about a dress not fitting properly.

The party
entered the room and found that it was a large bedroom with a four-poster bed
and various ornate dressers and the like around the walls, as well as a
fireplace in the centre of the north wall. Sat at one of the dressers was an
ogre dressed in a badly ripped woman’s dress. The chair the ogre was sat on was
on the point of breaking under her(?) weight, and the arms had already broken
off. The ogres face was smudged with red and black make-up.

Somewhat
bemused by this strange sight, the adventurers asked the ogre who she was. The
ogre, in an effort to be polite, introduced her(?)self as Janet d’Amberville,
before getting embarrassed about her attire and saying that she was “just going
to make herself more presentable”. As the ogre went to an armoire to fetch some
more clothes, Sneaky lined up for a backstab and did a whacking 5 points of
damage. The ogre enraged that she had get blood on her dress, ripped a bolster
off of the four-poster bed, swung at Sneaky, and missed. The rest of the party
charged in and hacked the ogre to pieces. They then searched the room and found
the body of the real Janet d’Amberville shoved up the chimney of the fire
place.

It was
obvious from the players map that there should be a large room to the west of
the one that they were in, so they searched the west wall for secret doors.
They found a secret door leading into another bedroom. Sneaky snuck in first
but failed her Hide in Shadows roll. The occupant was a large lion-headed man
dressed in ornate golden plate mail, who was just about to investigate what all
the commotion was in the adjoining room. Realising that she had been seen,
Sneaky apologised for intruding. The lion-headed man told her not to worry and
introduced himself as Richard d’Amberville (the reaction roll, plus Sneaky’s
charisma bonus was quite high).

Richard went
into the bedroom of Janet d’Amberville, and was quite grief stricken to see her
body. He thanked the party for avenging her death, and then asked the party to
accompany him. He took the party across the hallway to the room where Sneaky
had previously seen the cat-headed warriors. By now, the cat-headed people,
known as rakasta, had suspended chimes over the doors so that they sounded when
the door was opened, and had sprinkled a layer of flour in front of the
doorways inside their room.

Richard told
the party that he was the leader of the rakasta. The chimes and flour had been
put there because of a strange intruder that had ventured in recently. The
rakasta were not particularly fond of supernatural beings like ghosts and
spirits. They had been driven from their previous abode across the hallway by
two particularly nasty spirits, and asked the party if they could vanquish
these unnatural creatures.

Session Five

The party
agreed to help the rakasta, and went across the hallway to deal with the
ghostly creatures, which turned out to be wraiths. The party had surprise but
blew this on trying to talk to the spirits, which resembled transparent figures
of a man and a woman. As soon as the party started talking to the wraiths, they
transformed into hideous skeletal-faced apparitions and attacked. Klaus failed
his attempt to turn them, so they had to fight them hand-to-hand. Mazaramus
showed particular bravery, first casting magic
missile at one of them and then wading in with his staff that he found in
the slime room, which turned out to be a staff
of striking (in the module it was a staff of healing, but seeing as the
party already had one, I changed it). The wraiths failed to land a single hit,
though given that some of the party had pretty good armour classes this isn’t
too much of a surprise. After three or four rounds, the wraiths were slain, and
the party was free to search the room.

An iron safe
was located on the north wall, and Sneaky eagerly went to pick the lock.
Morgan’s claymore started playing discordant bagpipes in his head. Morgan held
the sword up, which pointed at the safe and caused it to give off a green glow.
Morgan went to strike the safe with the sword, but it refused to let him swing.
When he put the sword down on the floor it slid away from the safe a few inches. Undeterred by what was going on,
Sneaky continued to pick the lock on the safe. Her lock-picking was faultless
(06 on the roll) and the chest swung open, activating the trap that she hadn’t
bothered to check for. A cloud of spores erupted from the safe, engulfing
Sneaky and Klaus. Luckily, they both made their saves vs poison. Morgan’s
claymore was playing a more cheerful tune on the bagpipes (remember only Morgan
can hear them) with an undertone of “I tried to warn you!” Morgan had now
discovered that his sword had certain other powers, being empathic, one of
which was Find Traps. The party got 5,000 gold pieces from the safe for their
troubles.

The party
returned to the rakasta. The rakasta and Richard d’Amberville rewarded them
with a large silver key with a letter ‘R’ inlaid in its head, and made the
party honorary members of the tribe.

After this,
the party headed into the last room on the southern side of the hallway. This
was one of the two rooms connected by a walkway crossing the main hallway.

The room was
found to be some kind of banquet hall in an advanced state of decay. Shortly
after entering, twenty four ghostly diners emerged through the walls and took
their seats. The table, chairs and place settings then seemed to transform, no
longer decayed, with another nine seats with place settings and place cards
with the party members names on them.

The party
unanimously agreed to take their places, though Sneaky and Mazaramus were
tempted to deliberately swap seats just to see what happened, but decided
against it. The first course was served up by ghostly waiters entering through
some double doors at the head of a stairway that led onto the walkway outside
the room. This course was onion soup and amber wine. The effects of eating each
course would only be apparent once everyone had had chance to eat and the plates
were taken away ready for the next course. Sneaky, Mazaramus and Gandi declined
to finish their course and so gained no benefit. Lithanor and Talanius failed
their saving throws against the onion soup and each permanently gained 2 extra
hit points. Klaus was the only wounded party member that drank the amber wine
and was fully healed by drinking it. Too late for Sneaky who was still severely
wounded from her encounter with the gray ooze and the green slime to change her
mind.

The second
course was tossed salad, and this time everyone ate their meal. This had the
effect of randomly raising one of the characters attributes by 1-2 points and
lowering another random attribute by 1-2 points. All I told them at this
point was that they “felt different
somehow” and, to keep things flowing as it was close to the end of the gaming
session, would determine which attributes had been altered in between sessions
and tell them at the next session.

The third,
and main course, was roast beef, wheat bread, green beans, mushrooms in wine
sauce and red wine. Again, everyone partook of the full meal. The roast beef
and green beans just tasted nice. The wheat bread required those eating it to
save vs spells. Those that made the save would be immune to the effects of
starvation. Those that failed would require twice as much nourishment to
sustain themselves. Morgan, Mazaramus and Talanius made their saving throws.
This is going to make keeping track of rations a bit of a pain from now on
(though I decided to have the effects last only for the duration of playing
this module).

The mushrooms
in wine sauce required a saving throw vs poison. Those that save would have +4
on saves vs poison (again, just for the duration of this adventure). Those that
failed ended up slumped face down in their plate, apparently dead, not that
anyone cared at this point as the entire party was magically drunk from the red
wine (or dead drunk in some cases). Lithanor, Klaus and Mazaramus failed their
saving throws.

The fourth
course was apple strudel and brandy. Being drunk anyway, the party were past
caring and everyone who wasn’t ‘dead’ indulged in this final meal, though
Morgan declined the brandy. The apple strudel gave anyone who failed their save
vs spells the ability to ESP once
per week as per the second level magic-user spell (but more like a psychic
power than a spell and not requiring any casting). Morgan, Sneaky and Merick
gained the ESP ability. The brandy
caused anyone who drank it and failed a saving throw vs death ray to become
insubstantial and ghost-like, just like the other ghostly figures seated at the
table. Only Merick made his save.

To sum up,
Lithanor, Klaus and Mazaramus are ‘dead; from toadstool poisoning. Sneaky,
Gandi, Talanius and Bhakragh are ghosts. Only Morgan Bernhardt and Merick the
man-at-arms have ‘survived’ the feast and are heavily inebriated. If I were to
run the adventure strictly as written in the module then that would be campaign
over.

Gandi, in
ghost form and wanting more brandy, followed the ghostly waiters across the
walkway and into the kitchen (the only unexplored room in the west wing so
far). A ghostly hobgoblin servant handed Gandi a tea towel and told him to help
out with the washing up. Meanwhile, Morgan and Merick went running after Gandi.
Merick was feeling somewhat overconfident and goaded Gandi into fighting him,
even though Gandi was incorporeal and Merick didn’t have a “fanshy mashik sword
like what Morgan’s got”. Morgan and Merick ran back to the banquet hall,
followed by ghost-Gandi. As soon as they were all back in the banquet hall, the
amber bubble descended on the party again and the session ended.In the next session, the party ventures through the doors at the east end of the mirrored hallway and into the Indoor Forest.